I wonder if Biden/Harris were in a no-win situation here.
Yes, they were, agreed. But when in a no-win situation, then simply do what is moral AND legal and let the chips fall. Why can't the democrats ever be brave and courageous. Damn, who wants to vote for craven pusillanimity?
If the extra votes last time were Trump haters, then why not vote this time
Well, I gave six possible reasons why less votes for Harris than Biden . . . being a female and financial struggles top my list. Any sound reasonable to you, or can you throw in another possibility?
I'll add this one: the deadly reach of right wing media/propaganda has made inroads into the democratic demographics. There are virtually no counterparts for liberal/truthful information. Our society is drowning in hateful garbage. I wish Harris was bold during debate . . . 'No other broadcaster was fined for lying to their viewers, only Fox news was fined 800+ million dollars for lying to their viewers. What type of person enjoys being lied to?'
1. price gouging of groceries: Food availability is now a privilege. Like the media, far too many food manufacturers are owned by one entity, it is easy for them to price fix when there is little competition. Harris’ election promise of disbanding large monopolies should have been done two-three years ago by Biden.
Trump is in bed with large corporations, so if you are hoping to stop price gouging then you should have been very motivated to get out and vote for Harris.
2. price gouging of rent. Housing should be a right, but now it is a privilege. IMO, individual landlords and corporate landlords from other states and countries should be illegal. When they can easily and cheaply buy up entire neighborhoods, they exploit rent/housing availability/prices. Although inflation went up 4-10% these past years, rent went up 100% to 200% in my area. Biden never addressed this huge fail.
Trump is a landlord who has done exactly what you describe. As California AG, Harris has won big cases on the behalf of individual homeowners. Harris also had a plan for increasing housing supply which would reduce housing costs. Again, if these issues were a motivation for voters then they should have come out in droves for Harris.
3. education failure. americans only know words like ‘freedom’, ‘fascist.’ ‘communist”, ’socialist’ in a cartoon sense. america is a willfully dumb, dumb, dumb society. Most americans get their news from social media from other willfully dumb, dumb, dumb americans.
Walled off media bubbles and misinformation may have played a role.
4. Palestinian woman and children being murdered with american bombs, and Biden and Harris being resolute with their ACTIONS that it will continue.
Biden and Harris had both been pushing back on Israel while Trump was cheering Netanyahu on. As a single cause, I don't see it. On the fringes, like 250,000 votes across the entire country, maybe.
5. Selective law enforcement, corrupt 'supreme' court 'justice.' If you are rich, you can delay justice forever. Could Biden have done anything less? Dejoy still postmaster. No consequences for Khashoggi murder. Continued support of do-nothing Merrick Garland. (They can arrest Jack Teixeira for stealing classiifed docs, but not the former president). No words of change from Harris. Why vote for this deplorable status quo?
You are aware that the DOJ had indicted Trump on several charges, right? Are you also aware that a lot of the delays were due to Trump appointed judges? Again, this one is night and day. How can you complain about corruption and not be motivated to vote against a guy with 30+ felony convictions?
6. Harris was a woman.
That could be a reason why more men voted for Trump than in 2020. This is probably where I start to project my own bias because I never really took notice of Harris being a woman. I just saw a competent politician, so I never saw her sex as being an issue.
I wonder if Biden/Harris were in a no-win situation here.
Yes, they were, agreed. But when in a no-win situation, then simply do what is moral AND legal and let the chips fall. Why can't the democrats ever be brave and courageous. Damn, who wants to vote for craven pusillanimity?
The following assumes that Harris would win the election, and having come down on Israel could have lost the election.
As I see/saw it, the route taken is bad for the Palestinians, but would be better for them, Ukraine, the U.S., and the rest of the world in the longer run. A short term lose, but a longer term win???
Religion has not worked out for any peoples of the Levant for the last 4000 years. Not since YHWH showed up demanding blood. It's been down hill into the Valley of Death ever since.
“There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion,” -Daniel Dennett
You are and always have been against religion and you laugh at all of the Gods, gods, and an alien authority in general so I have to ask you if somehow some law was passed commanding people to quit engaging in fantasy and to believe in one another.
Would people still fight and kill?
Would the wealthy still attempt to control human progress in a way favoring themselves first?
Would there still be opportunistic politicians such as Donald Trump in charge from time to time?
How would we be any better off? You would still have your pagan majik of rock vortexes, pyramids, and mind altering drugs. Should we make all of that illegal too?
if somehow some law was passed commanding people to quit engaging in fantasy and to believe in one another
The mores of the Enlightenment cannot be legislated or socially demanded. Humanist compassion is felt in the soul. This species is not ready yet. Too much tolerance in society for the strong animal personna. Not enough acceptance of our total population as Us.
Would ... Would ... Would ...
Yes, of course. We aren't repealing humanity. But with a Humanist mind set for most people in the greater society such throwback anomalies should be easily identified and easily stomped into the dirt.
“There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion,” -Daniel Dennett
We aren't repealing humanity. But with a Humanist mind set for most people in the greater society such throwback anomalies should be easily identified and easily stomped into the dirt.
So in other words, humans need a new mindset, according to you. Looking back at some of your past posts, I see that your humanist agenda has the "government" replacing "the church". Message 49
quote:Haven't you realized yet that all income belongs to the government? You may have earned it, but have you ever noticed all those numbers in columns on your paystub? That's the government telling you how much of their income they will allow you to keep.
We wont allow this to happen. Since you insist on demolishing our church, we will do the same with yours. Bye bye, BIG Government.
Haven't you realized yet that all income belongs to the government?
We wont allow this to happen.
Wake up, Phat. This is the reality you live today.
Look at your paystub. A lot of those deductions are not voluntary. The government takes what they want skimming right off the top before you even see a penny. What ends up in your bank account is that portion the government doesn’t need.
There is even an official statement where government claims ownership. The 16th Amendment. In practical operation the government owns your income and determines how much they want before leaving the rest to you. That is not from any Humanist agenda. That is the Capitalist agenda embedded in the capitalist controlled government.
“There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion,” -Daniel Dennett
I see that your humanist agenda has the "government" replacing "the church". Message 49
My message had nothing to do with any agenda. It had to do with the practical reality on the ground.
The only thing that can replace religion with its delusional fantasy is reality. This would be a good thing. But government is a necessity of human organization. How we conduct that governance is a humanist concern but government will not replace religion as a distracting poison on the human psyche. Government is necessary. Religion is not necessary and needs to be abandoned regardless of the government.
“There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion,” -Daniel Dennett
The government takes what they want skimming right off the top before you even see a penny. What ends up in your bank account is that portion the government doesn’t need.
That adds a painful wrinkle to Trump's stated proposal of replacing income tax with tariffs, assuming he actually goes through with that.
As it works now with income tax, the governments (both federal (FITW) and state (SITW) and in some places also local/city) withhold an amount from your paycheck, effectively a layaway installment payment on the income tax you will eventually owe. In case you forget about buying items on layaway (which has been replaced with using a credit card), the store would keep your purchase in storage while you made partial payments on it, handing it over to you when your payments had added up to the purchase price days, weeks, or even months after the purchase date. Then at the end of the tax year, you calculate how much income tax you actually owe, apply your withholding to pay that tax, and either pay more if your withholding was too little or receive a refund if you had withheld too much.
As a result, not only has that taken away part of the pain of paying that income tax, but people have even come to view their tax refund as "extra cash", a kind of a bonus. Even though that "bonus" is actually your own money. In effect, you were never aware of that portion of your income that was withheld. And it never entered into your daily budgeting, unless you would include your annual refund in your budgeting.
Including your refund in your budget and depending on getting it resulted in a nasty shock for many under GHW Bush's (Dubya's dad) "big tax break". It didn't change our actual income tax one bit, but rather he reduced how much was being withheld. As a result, our paychecks looked bigger, but then with we did our taxes we ended up either with a much smaller refund or else we suddenly had to pay out more in taxes. Thus, either you suddenly could no longer depend on that "extra income" of a sizable refund, but you could also suddenly have an unexpected extra expense with the same effect of that "unexpected $400 car repair bill" that could send a struggling household's finances spiraling into chaos.
Just one example of why it is vitally important to never trust a Republican's "big tax break." Another example was Reagan's much ballyhooed "big tax break" which actually caused my own lower middle-class taxes to nearly double.
quote:
"Hello, I'm from the Republican government and I'm here to give you a tax break." -- a modified version of a well-known Reagan quote about the most frightening words you could hear
Now let's look at replacing income tax with tariffs would work. Without withholding, our paychecks would suddenly look much bigger, inducing a "sugar rush" in us. But then suddenly almost everything would suddenly be much more expensive, about 20% greater. Your income would have "increased" slightly while your expenses would increase far more. The net result would be that you would have instantaneously become much poorer.
Besides the sudden shock of skyrocketing prices, you would also constantly suffer the pain of paying out much more of your paycheck for the necessities, such that, despite being slightly larger, your paycheck no longer goes as far as it used to under income tax. And you would watch that happen every single day. And there would be no "annual bonus of a tax refund check" to come to your rescue. Just the constant pain of inexorably growing personal poverty.
Just to throw some figures at it, compare your annual income tax rate -- the percentage of your total income payable as tax -- to a 20% increase on all your spending. As a retiree my annual tax is about 6% of my total income. Replacing my income tax with a 20% increase in expenses due entirely to tariffs would effectively increase my "taxes" by a factor of 3.33 -- I would be paying more than triple what I pay under income tax. Since as a retiree with no debt (at least for now) I am "low income" and have minimal expenses, I have no doubt that most of my fellow victims will be paying a much greater percentage of their incomes.
And viewing the effect of those tariffs as a kind of "sales tax", we have already examined how sales taxes impact lower-income households much more and harder that higher-income households; ie, lower-income consumers pay a much higher percentage of their incomes in sales tax than higher-income do.
Please review the effects of different kinds of taxes on different income groups, watch again this VOX YouTube video:
Apocalypse Now:
"The horror!" -- Col. Kurtz
Edited by dwise1, : further qualified the modified Reagan quote
Do you realize that 'big government' really is a term that can apply to a lot of things?
Let's say we go to no government territory, then you will also have no large entity protecting you from company greed, from lets say, price gauging by farma companies. You know that deal where Biden made a lot of drug prices lower? You'd lose that, because suddenly it's just YOU, or maybe your state trying to go up against that, and trust me, it's a money and power game.
The government isn't ever going to be like a church, but if you think about it, the benefits and protections that you have, in the capitalist society that the US oh so loves, companies all around you will try to get every last cent from you, because alone, you are weak, you can't challenge them, you can't sue them, because there's no government agency protecting your rights.
Sure, no government sounds perfect, but if you look around the world, you'll find that the countries with the happiest people, like Finland or Denmark, are countries with large governments.
Governments with a lot of protections for the average Joe, stuff that stops corporate greed.
But no worries, you're not going to go no government under Trump. It'll become a corporate government who doesn't give a shit about you and only wants to maximize the profits of its top people. What a wondrous hole your country has dug itself with Trump.
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